


touch like a balm

by dennisrickmans



Category: EastEnders (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pushing Daisies Fusion, Multi, found family trope abound, its all about baking pies and loving ur friends in THIS house
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:14:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23737429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dennisrickmans/pseuds/dennisrickmans
Summary: ”I wake pies and bake the dead. Oh, that was deeply wrong. I bake pies and wake the dead. There we go.”//or the one where Ash runs a bakery, Dotty is trying to be the world's greatest private eye by cheating, and Iqra just wants to know what's going on.pushing daisies au.
Relationships: Callum "Halfway" Highway/Ben Mitchell, Dotty Cotton & Ash Panesar, Iqra Ahmed/Ash Panesar, Keegan Baker & Ash Panesar
Comments: 14
Kudos: 17





	1. love like a wound, love like forgiveness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hissingmiseries](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hissingmiseries/gifts).



chapter one – love like a wound, love like forgiveness

Ash’s shit day goes like this: Dotty gets her another job, Keegan pesters her about bills, Callum and Bobby break a plate and Iqra dies.

It’s a lot.

//

“Bills for you,” Keegan greets, leaning against the doorway to his office.

“You know, when I made you the manager, it’s because I didn’t want to deal with any of the _managing_ part of the bakery,” Ash says, tying an apron around her waist. It’s so early in the morning that she doesn’t even want to know the exact time and she can still feel the imprint of her bed beneath her back, and she knows better than to close her eyes for more than a second after the last time she fell asleep standing up, elbow deep in dough.

Keegan snorts. “And yet we are _partners_ , so I need your thoughts on what exactly we need for the next stock.”

Ash sighs but nods and runs their stock through her sleep-riddled mind. “Um, we’re running low on raspberries I’m sure. Strawberries, definitely, we’re down to the last ones today and I’ve been making less strawberry pies because of it. I had to give Dotty a cranberry pie yesterday and she threatened to never come back again.”

Keegan doesn’t look up from the list he’s making but he snorts. “Oh, how grateful we would all be for that. She re-organised all of my files last week, did I tell you?”

Ash chuckles. “No, you didn’t. What exactly did she do?”

Keegan does look up now, pad of paper and pen tucking underneath his arms as he crosses them as a frown flits across his face. “I had everything how I wanted it, everything was filed in terms of likability –”

Ash laughs, pausing in her weighing of flour in order to clap her hands before clasping them over her mouth. “You’re kidding. I thought you were joking when you said you were gonna file everything like that! Keegan!”

Keegan gestures wildly, a reluctant grin stretching his lips. “It works, ok? Or worked. Like, Ian is at the back of my third filing cabinet because he’s a Tory, and I remember that, I remember putting it there and thinking, fuck you. It was a good system!”

Ash giggles, absolutely delighted, and Keegan bites down his bottom lip to try and stop his own laughter. “Ok, ok. So how is it organised now that Dotty has _ruined_ everything?”

Keegan rolls his eyes and says with as much venom as he can muster, “ _Alphabetically_.”

Ash laughs louder this time, her head shaking from side to side. “Ridiculous,” she grins. “You’re absolutely ridiculous.”

“But, that’s not all! She left a note on my desk with a charge for her ‘services’,” Keegan throws his hands up for air quotes, only making Ash giggle harder.

“Well, did you pay her?” Ash asks, picking up her flour again.

There is a pause.

“…Yes,” Keegan grumbles and Ash can’t help chuckling to herself, pulling a bowl of the last strawberries closer. “This is mutinous. You’re showing blatant favouritism to someone outside this partnership. I’m pretty sure I could sue based on that.”

“Oh, shut _up_ ,” Ash says and flicks flour at Keegan, watching Keegan duck to dodge getting any stains on his suit, setting her off giggling again.

Keegan turns to go back into his office, after a long death glare which Ash replied with a sarcastic blown kiss, but instead does a full circle to face Ash again. “Oh, meant to say, Chantelle and Gray vow renewals are next week, if you wanna come?”

“Oh, I- I thought that’d be a family event,” Ash replies, carefully, fingers frozen over a rotten berry.

Keegan doesn’t hesitate when he says, “Yes.”

Ash smiles at him. “I’d love to,” she says and watches Keegan smile back at her, his face like the setting sun.

He leaves and Ash touches the berry and watches it turn a glossy red, alive again like the rot had never existed.

//

This is how it is: Keegan has known Ash the longest. She remembers purple crayons and standing on stools with flour all over their face and staining their clothes while they watched Karen baked, babbling in a way that only seven-year olds can as Karen listened attentively.

They are all fuzzy memories, as though she is viewing them through rose-coloured glass, but she cherishes them all the same, cradles them in her heart like old relics of times when she felt sturdier on her two feet.

Some memories are clearer: her and Keegan, crouched over dead flies, a swatter in his hand and a stopwatch in her’s, her reaching out and touching one of the bugs and them watching in wonderment as it comes back to life, her finger pressing the stopwatch, timing how long she can do this, how long she can reanimate the dead. A minute later, a dragonfly dropped from the sky in front of them and Ash had turned to Keegan with wide eyes.

“This is-” Keegan said, face bright with child-like wonder, “Ash, you’re like a comic book character!”

She had grinned and they’d both ran inside his house, shouting happily to Karen that they had something cool to show her.

(Later, Karen would sit them both down and make them promise not to say anything about what Ash could do, that this had to be a secret between the three of them, and didn’t all superheroes keep their powers a secret, anyway? Just look at Superman, eh? Even later, Suki would scrub flour from Ash’s skin, and snipe about how she had ruined her clothes, tutting about how Ash couldn’t enjoy a cleaner hobby, like reading, just like she did when she was a girl.

But, for only a moment, there was only pounding feet, a rush of air in their lungs and their hands clasped together.)

//

“Got a job for you,” Dotty greets, tossing a folded sheet of paper onto the counter, not an hour after Keegan disappeared back into his office.

“You know, we invented the word ‘hello’,” Ash replies, exasperated with the company she keeps, not looking up from the dough in front of her. It’s sticking to her fingers and she reaches for more flour.

“Hello, I’ve got a job for you,” Dotty deadpans and Ash grins as she starts kneading.

“Bit busy here, what’s the job exactly?” Ash asks, gesturing with her bag of flour to demonstrate her point. Dotty scowls and picks up the sheet of paper.

“Middle-aged man turned up dead in the Thames, shot to death,” Dotty summarises, shoving the paper back into her pocket. Ash whistles and Dotty nods. “Exactly. Drama. And where there’s drama, there’s money.” She grins.

“My condolences to his grieving family of course,” Ash adds, giving Dotty a pointed look.

“Of course,” Dotty parrots. “His grieving, twenty-grand-paying family.” Ash raises her eyebrows, Dotty grins wider. “Drama,” she repeats.

“Well then, sounds eventful. Any witnesses?”

“Nope.”

Ash sighs. “Ah, never is. That’d be too easy, huh?”

Dotty waves a hand in front of her. “We don’t need easy. We have you and you’re – y’know,” she wriggles her fingers, spookily.

“Stop that,” Ash says, considering throwing a berry at her as she starts to fold her dough into a tin. “Also, did you re-arrange Keeagan’s files?”

“Yup,” Dotty replies, popping the ‘p’. “They were a mess and I refuse to let the company I keep be sub-par.”

“Right,” Ash chuckles. “And it has nothing to do with Keegan finding you your perfect office?”

“Yes,” Dotty replies, instantly. “And, also, I made him pay for my organisation, so. It’s not, a thank you or whatever.” Ash hums, unconvinced and Dotty scowls and turns her head to the side, staring at all the cutlery and plates stacked on one of the counters, her face flushing pink.

Ash takes pity on her and changes the subject. Dotty’s shoulders are getting too tense beneath that big woolly jacket she wears, the one that is several sizes too long so that it dwarves her frame, and Ash would rather be able to choose the music on their ride to the morgue. “Well, we can meet once The Pie Hole shuts at six, and head to the morgue, then?”

Dotty frowns and crosses her arms, face still a pale pink but Ash pretends not to notice.. “How come your bakery is more important than my detective business?”

“Because you can solve crimes without me, The Pie Hole can’t bake pies without me.”

“Then that just shows that you have a bad business model, doesn’t it?” Dotty smiles sweetly and Ash flicks some flour at her as well and watches Dotty duck the exact same way as Keegan did.

With a dirty look, Dotty heads towards the entrance. Ash doesn’t ask how Dotty got in considering the front door was locked and it’s five in the morning, simply assuming the answer is something that she can sleep better at night not knowing.

Ash goes back to kneading her dough and thinks about twenty grand and dead men.

//

This is how it is: Ash has powers. Well, _a_ power. She can bring the dead back to life. There are rules and Ash spent most of her childhood figuring this out. One touch brings something back to life. Second touch, dead, forever. If someone is brought back for more than a minute, then something else dies, the balance of life and all that.

She uses it often now (in a way that some may view as cheating in the Private Eye business, but Dotty simply views as using the gifts given to you for good, though mostly money) but she remembers trying not to use it during her teenage years. She had felt like a god of death, the balance of deciding who should live and die a heavy weight on her shoulders but then –

(car, Kheerat, glass, bone, blood blood blood.)

there are always exceptions to be made.

//

There’s a loud crash in the sitting area and Ash sighs from the kitchen as she pulls a raspberry pie out of the oven.

“Sorry!” Bobby and Callum call and she sees them crouched over what used to be a plate when she comes through with a broom.

“Don’t touch it, you’ll cut yourselves,” Ash says, shooing them away and starts brushing up the mess.

“Sorry, Ash,” Bobby says, eyes wide and sad. “Callum was trying to get up and I bumped into him, you can take it out of my wages –”

“It was just as much my fault, I wasn’t paying attention, I’ll pay for it,” Callum interrupts, reaching for his wallet.

“It’s no one’s fault, it was an accident,” Ash says, gesturing to the now clear floor, the smashed plate all in her dustpan. “See? No harm done.” She can see them physically holding back from insisting again when she raises her eyebrow at them. “Well? Scatter.” She waves her broom at them mock-threateningly and watches Bobby smile weakly and turn to serve another customer whereas Callum lingers for a second. “Something up?”

Callum blinks. “Oh – sorry, it’s nothing, I just –” He sighs and sits back down in his stool at the front counter. Ash circles behind it to put the smashed plate in the bin and braces herself on the counter in front of him. He smiles at her weakly. “I have my job interview today and I’m scared I’m gonna screw it up.”

“Ah,” Ash says, nodding in understanding. “Well, listen, I’ve never met someone more qualified to be a paramedic, ok? So, just, deep breaths and trust yourself.”

Callum smiles at her. “Thanks, Ash. You’re a good friend.”

Ash smiles in return. “Oh, it’s nothing. I’m just speaking the truth, here. Also, you’ve saved me more than once. Nutmeg in my rhubarb pies? You really saved me with that.”

Callum chuckles bashfully and it’s a warm sound. “I-Well, it’s nothing. My mother, she-she made them like that.” He turns his head to the side, his fingers tapping restlessly on the counter.

“Well, she was a smart woman,” Ash says, expression soft when Callum glances over at her.

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Yeah, she was.” They stay there, quietly, for a moment then he smiles at her again just before he leaves and when she looks down, she sees he’s left a five pound note on the counter, doubtless for the broken plate.

Ash smiles as she picks it up, already planning on giving Callum his next slice of pie for free.

//

This is how it is: Callum is a regular at The Pie Hole, his smile a constant companion to Ash whenever she places her pies in their display shelves, ready to be served.

He always orders a slice of apple pie and never leaves a tip less than three pounds, sometimes he leaves behind a napkin with a doodle on them of a dog on a skateboard and blushed down his neck when she’d asked about it, revealing that the dog was the main character in a comic he had made for his nephew.

(Ash had once forgotten her apron at The Pie Hole, and when she’d returned to get it in the small hours of the morning, she’d found Callum sat outside in the rain, his clothes soaked to his skin, clutching a baby’s blanket in his hands.

He’d stared at her blankly when she tried to speak to him but he went willingly when she dragged him into her bakery and sat him in a booth. She’d forced his hands around a warm cup of coffee in order to warm them up, but his grip was lax and so they sat with her hands cupped around his.

His skin had felt like ice and he only spoke once to murmur his nephew’s name before falling silent again and Ash had felt her heart in her chest splinter.

What was the point of having this power if she can’t save her friends from grief?

Callum doesn’t draw on the napkins anymore but he leaves bigger tips.)

//

The man on the table is dead, purple bruises stark against the placid white his skin has become. There are multiple holes in his chest. Ash checks the tag around his toe to avoid looking inside his grotesque wounds. Jack Branning, it reads. The name sounds familiar, but Ash can’t quite remember why. A horrid thought occurs to her, one where she might have once served this man at her bakery, might have known him when he was alive and now all she will remember is how he looked dead. It leaves goosepimples on her arms, even underneath her denim jacket.

“Well, let’s get this show on the road, yeah?” Dotty says, folding her arms in front of her chest. There has been a time in which Dotty would have made comments and digs at the victims’ wounds but even she has tired of it, especially after one of the victims had been a girl who revealed she’d been stabbed to death by her father, something that had left her looking as white as the corpses surrounding them.

Ash glances at her watch and waits for hand to reach twelve before tapping Jack lightly on the shoulder. The result is immediate; Jack shoots up and stares at them in shock, eyes blinking too quickly and chest heaving with breaths he doesn’t need. He opens his mouth to speak, and no noise comes out, his hands reaching up for his throat, fingers pressing into the purple left on his skin.

Dotty groans. “Great, now we need to play twenty questions.” Ash can hear her rolling her eyes without having to turn around. This happens too often, sometimes the victim’s windpipe is so damaged that they can’t speak properly. Once, Dotty left after three cases in a row with strangulation involved and Ash heard her groaning and moaning the entire time it took her to leave the building.

“Was it a man or a woman?” Jack stares at her blankly, so Ash tries again. “Mr Branning, you were murdered. Was it a man or a woman who killed you?” He doesn’t answer, instead looking around the room, at all the other closed cases in the morgue. She wonders how jarring this must be for someone, she wonders if there actually is an after-life or if it feels like a second has passed between shutting your eyes and opening them again to two women making weird requests. This is not the time to think about such things though, so she tries a different question. “Jack? Where they young or older?”

He turns back and starts gesturing with his hands, miming writing something down. Ash hears Dotty scramble for her notebook and pen while Ash feels the clock tick tick ticking. There is one second left until the hand hits twelve again when Ash taps Jack on the shoulder again, his body collapsing into the table he’s on, his fingers bent over the notebook he’d scribbled onto.

“Well, let’s hope this is good, considering we’ve got fuck all else out of him,” Dotty mutters and reaches forward. Ash sees what’s written when Dotty brushes Jack’s fingers asides and takes her pen and notebook back.

One word. Mitchell.

//

This is how it is: Dotty is more wolf than girl, dressed in plaid pinafores or ripped jeans, always with that dark woolly coat thrown on, so big that you can only see the tips of her fingers poking out the sleeves. She kicks her feet lightly when she’s sitting down and bites her nails down to the quick and spins a thin ring around her pointer finger, all while grinning with teeth.

Dotty caught Ash one day, having just brought a stray cat back to life, and showed up at the front door of The Pie Hole the next morning with a glint in her eyes and a business proposition.

“Can you bring back people too?” She’d asked and Ash had only nodded. Her smile grew wider. “Well, I was just thinking about how much easier it would be to solve murders if the victims could up and sing, huh?”

(They’re a good team, Ash thinks. Dotty’s a neon light in your veins, a fast-paced race-track that stills beneath Ash’s fingers when she touches her, like a live-wire finally finding a fuse.

Dotty looks at her like that sometimes, when Ash calls her a friend, as if she’s just woken up, like she’s been dead this whole time and Ash brought her back with a simple word.

She falls asleep on Ash’s couch sometimes, drowning in that big coat, finger’s twitching on that ring, face soft with sleep.

Ash pulls her duvet into the living room and sleeps on the rug next to her, seized with the urge to not let Dotty be alone, even in her sleep.

Dotty’s never said anything about it, but she always lets Ash borrow her eyeliner the next day.)

//

The rain makes her skin feel numb, even under her clothes as they become soaked and stick to her. Ash wonders briefly if this is how Callum had felt, feeling out of his body, The Pie Hole sign a beacon glaring through the noise.

(It had been an inside joke, you know. The Pie Hole. Keegan had whispered it as a joke when they were ten and Ash had proposed they run a bakery like the one she had seen on holiday once, both of them curled up in sleeping bags on his living room floor.

It feels like a million years ago, memories of sliding around in socks and running down streets till the soles of her feet felt fuzzy, her lungs too big for her body.)

She’s not sure how much time passes, leaning up against the building across the road from her bakery, thinking about Keegan, and her mother, and bakeries, when –

there is a blare of light that illuminates a figure on the street, a silhouette, before a car crashes into it and the scream of the tires is so awful that Ash thinks she’s in the car herself (car, Kheerat, glass, bone, blood blood blood.)

She stays frozen before she throws herself forward on autopilot, barely processing that the car has sped away and left the silhouette on the road, folded in on itself, purely running on the sharp pain in her temples, the blood in her mouth, power buzzing beneath her skin, whispering _you were born for this._

Ash turns them over and sees their face, blood trickling down the side of their head and coating their dark hair. She barely manages a gasp before her fingers touch the side of their face and sees their eyes snap open.

//

This is how it is: Iqra Ahmed, on her way home from work, crosses the road without looking up from a text from her sister, and gets hit by a car and dies on impact.

This is how it is: Iqra Ahmed wakes up a minute later, chest heaving and staring up at a blurry face that’s there and then gone. There is blood in her mouth and her bones feel like dust.

This is how it is: Ash Panesar is so fucking tired.


	2. the bend of your knee, i’m undone

chapter two – the bend of your knee, i’m undone

Once, when Ash was a kid, she dug her toes into the sand whenever her family went to the beach and spread her arms out the entire length her five year old body would allow her to.

Kheerat had stopped next to her, gangly as he started to enter his teens, and asked what on earth she was doing.

“I’m trying to hug the sky!” she had exclaimed.

“Ok,” he said, in a tone that suggested that he didn’t understand at all but he continued on anyway. “Why are your feet buried in the sand?”

Ash sighed as if the answer was obvious, which to her it was. “The sky is massive, Kheer, I might fall over when she hugs back, so this – ” she gestured to her feet with a broad sweep, “ – is so I don’t.”

There was a lengthy pause in which he just stared at her and she stared right back. He seemed like he was about to shrug and leave her be when he saw something over her shoulder and his face shifted. She turned around and she saw her mother lower her eyebrow before she turns to continue unpacking the towels, Vinny swaddled against her chest with a bright orange fabric. Ash doesn’t mind Vinny, he’s cute and seems to think she’s the most interesting person ever whenever she appears in his view over his cot but he doesn’t know how to use the potty and Ash, rather proud of having been using the potty for _years_ now, just thinks it’s unforgiveable.

“Need some help?” Kheerat asked and Ash whipped around and saw he had buried his feet down to his ankle and was smiling at her and Ash thought she was right when she said he was her best friend in her assignment in class yesterday, this was so much better than just teaching her to ride a bike.

Ash grinned and reached over and clasped his hand in hers and they spread out their arms and caught the sky.

(Years later, Ash visits a beach and digs her toe in the sand and tries to imagine holding Kheerat’s hand again.

She can’t.)

//

Ash knew that when she came into work after not sleeping at all the previous night, that Keegan was going to notice something was wrong straight away but she’s still annoyed at how transparent she must be.

“Alright,” Keegan says, pulling a stool out from her counter in the middle of the kitchen before sitting on it, arms folded on the counter and eyes trained on Ash’s face, “What’s wrong?”

Ash stubbornly keeps her gaze on the dough she’s kneading rougher than she should. “Nothing,” she intones.

“Bullshit,” Keegan snaps. She’s feels her hands tense on the bag of flour she’s reaching for and forces herself to loosen up, but knows he caught it anyway. “It’s five in the morning and you’re being cruel to that innocent dough.” He cracks a smile, she can see it in her peripheral but she stays silent and it slips away. “Seriously, Ash. We don’t do secrets.”

Ash digs her fingers into her dough, giving up on kneading, distantly noting that it’s ruined and she’ll have to start over, and that’s twenty minutes she’ll be behind schedule and that’ll hold back orders and she might have to tell Old Mrs Kerry that she can’t have her usual and won’t that just be awful and –

“Ash!” Keegan’s voice right next to her ear makes Ash jump and she realises she’s crushed her dough and it’s all wet and so is her face and she’s crying and making an awful keening noise in the back of her throat. “Christ,” Keegan says, aghast and yanks her into a hug and Ash laughs wetly into his shoulder because this feels familiar in an awful way.

Several minutes past and distantly Ash knows they need to get back to work soon but finds that she doesn’t want to leave the comfort of Keegan’s arms. She feels eight again, back when she used to throw her arms around Keegan’s middle all the time and he would catch her every time. How affectionate she used to be, now she feels like she’s never been touched before.

“I brought someone back last night,” Ash blurts out, but she says it like ‘I Brought someone Back last night,’ because there’s significance in the perfectly regular statement and Keegan picks up on it right away.

He tenses with surprise but quickly loosens up again. “Right,” he murmurs. His hand is on the back of her neck, thumb pressed into the nape, just like he always does, his other hand pressed flat on her upper back. “Right,” he whispers again, almost to himself, his fingers twitching. “Who?”

Ash takes a deep breath to steel herself. “Iqra Ahmed.” It feels like a bullet in her mouth.

Keegan’s hands spasm. “Iqra? As in the woman who comes in here once a month? As in the woman our financial advisor? That Iqra?”

Ash pulls out of the hug and takes her hair out of the bun it was in so she can re-tie it tighter, carefully avoiding Keegan’s incredulous look. “Yes, that Iqra,” Ash replies, crossing her arms across her chest defensively when her hair is back up again, the corners of her scalp feeling tighter and finding a strange solace in the sensation.

Keegan half laughs, dragging his hands down his face. “Fuck, ok. Ok, so many questions, um, how did she, uh, die?”

“Hit and run,” Ash replies, trying to sound as clinical as possible.

All the air leaves Keegan’s lungs and he looks away, mirroring Ash’s pose and she sees his jaw work. She suddenly wishes that she had delivered the news gentler, considering this is a mutual friend she’s talking about and suddenly wants to kick herself.

“Fuck,” he murmurs, and Ash can only nod in agreement. “How did she react?”

Ash feels her fingers twitch just like Keegan’s did and spares a moment to reflect on how much they mirror each other. “React?” she echoes.

Keegan turns to look her square in the eye. “To being brought back to life?” he clarifies, and it sounds like a challenge.

Ash glances away as she answers, takes stock of how she left her flour a little too close to the edge of the counter to be completely comfortable. “I don’t know.” A weighted pause as she feels Keegan’s stare burn into the side of her head. She should push the flour further back into the centre of the counter. “I ran away as soon as I touched her.”

“Fuck,” Keegan repeats and looks as if he wants to give her another hug but doesn’t and she could cry with how much he knows her. “Why?”

“A Mitchell killed one of Dotty’s victims. Or at least was involved. I found out maybe an hour earlier,” Ash replies, and looks over at Keegan who looks like he’s ready to stop asking Ash questions now and would actually rather lie down for several hours. “So they’re close by, which also might mean – ”

“-That your family might be close by as well,” Keegan finishes and lets out a big gust of a sigh. He scratches the back of his head, thinking. “I mean, it doesn’t necessarily mean that, the Mitchells work with other people and so does – your family.”

Ash shrugs, the conclusion could be true but it doesn’t feel right, she doesn’t want to say something cheesy like she can sense that her family are close by but something is gnawing at her gut, telling her that she hasn’t seen them in four years; such a record was never going to last. She knows her mother, to let her freedom stretch too far is to let Ash believe she has real control over her life.

Keegan stares at the side of her head for a few moments before shaking his head. “Well, this is a lot to process so I’m going to go to my office and stare at a wall for several hours.”

“Usual day for you then?” Ash snarks, familiarity settling on her shoulders again. This she can do, poke fun at Keegan. It is as natural as hugs were for her at eight.

Keegan rolls his eyes, murmurs, “Yeah, yeah,” but before he leaves, he pushes her flour into the centre of the table.

Ash watches him leave and thinks that her heart is going to break a rib from how full it is.

//

This is how it is: Keegan is Ash’s witness, just like she’s his.

He’s seen it all, all of her – her crouched over dead bugs with a stopwatch at seven years old, her scuffing her shoe in the dirt while she complained about her mother on the swings at their old local park at fourteen years old, her standing shivering on his doorstep with stiches along her scalp and a broken arm at eighteen years old.

She’s seen all of him – him rolling in the dirt while giggling at her squealing over a worm at five years old, him crying into her shoulder after a week of ignoring her after they had a fight about the rough crowd he started hanging out with at fifteen years old, his hands warm on her cheeks as he cupped her face and told her that they should open a pie shop just like they always talked about at nineteen years old.

It’s hard sometimes, remembering, because so much of it hurts and Ash feels it all like splinters in her skin, sharp memories that dig in. But so much of it is Keegan, Keegan grinning at her, Keegan pressing his hand into the back of her neck and grounding her, Keegan punching her lightly in the shoulder.

(It’s nice, Ash thinks. Remembering when it’s Keegan.)

//

Ash thinks that the most bizarre friendship she’s ever seen unfold is the one between Dotty and Bobby. Currently, they are sitting in a booth together, Dotty chewing on her strawberry pie (Keegan got Ash more strawberries on time, she informed Dotty and pretended that she didn’t see how soft Dotty’s face had gotten) while Bobby circles something on her newspaper and gestures with her pen while she nods.

Ash remembers when they first met, two years ago, she had disappeared into the back to quickly grab her coat at the beginning of her and Dotty’s situation (Situation with a capital ‘s’ because it was a Thing), and when she had come out, she had seen Dotty frowning at Bobby as he smiled shyly at her, offering his hand while introducing himself.

She came closer and managed to hear the end of their conversation.

“…oh well, but it’s nice to meet you,” Bobby said and with one last slight smile, he had ducked around Ash and started to clean up some dishes.

Ash raised an eyebrow at Dotty, not yet so adept at reading her, and thought that she might have looked thoughtful before she mimicked Ash’s expression.

“Done wasting time? Corpses are getting cold,” was all she said and she turned on her heel and strode from The Pie Hole, leaving Ash to only sigh and follow her.

It wasn’t as hard to get information out of Bobby as it was for Dotty, so he easily told her that he had simply introduced himself and tried to guess what her favourite pie was but she told him he had gotten it wrong and that she didn’t even like pie at all. Ash remembers how he had shrugged bashfully and given her a small smile before he went about his work.

(“You do strawberry pie?” Dotty asked a year into their Situation, sitting on a stool fifteen minutes before Ash shut her shop, twisting her ring around her finger.

Ash grinned and she hadn’t known Dotty as well then but she was starting and she knew not to say anything other than, “Yes,” and watch as Dotty’s lips twitched into something that wasn’t quite a smile but was closer than it was before.)

Ash does a mental check and thinks that her apple pie doesn’t need to be taken out of the oven for the next ten minutes so she decides to come stand by Dotty and Bobby.

Bobby looks up and smiles, and Ash thinks that he really is sweet, prone to quietness and has a habit of twisting his fingers in a way that looks borderline painful whenever he gets stressed or nervous, but also looks at people with a child-like wonder. “Hey, Ash,” he greets, and he has a happy flush on his cheeks as he gestures to the newspaper he is holding. “I was telling Dotty some thoughts I had on the cases in the paper today.”

Ash slides in next to Dotty who grumbles as she bumps their hips together but moves up, so Ash takes it as a win. Dotty has taken off her big coat and folded it neatly next to her and Ash can see she’s wearing ripped jeans and button black shirt – a mix of professional and delinquent which Dotty seems most comfortable in – enough to be taken seriously but enough to warn that she will most like say something catty as she works. “And what thoughts were these?” Ash asks.

“Well, a girl was reported missing last night and it says here her family claim she would never run away from home because she’s very shy, yeah?” Bobby seems to gain more momentum as he speaks, tapping the paper with the pen as he speaks, smile slowly inching into something broader which Ash mirrors. “But, parents don’t know what their kids get up to, to it would be foolish to fully ignore that outcome.” He seems to remember himself and his smile dims but still stays on his face as he looks at Dotty.

Dotty nods slightly. “You’re right,” she smirks, black lipstick curving up and twisting at the corner of her mouth. “You planning on taking my business away for yourself there?”

Bobby flushes at the compliment and shakes his head no to reassure her but seems to the absorb the compliment as he seems to glow as he leaves the booth and goes to help another customer. Ash turns to Dotty who steadfastly stares at her pie as she cuts another bite with the side of her fork. “That was nice of you,” Ash says, eventually, unable to help herself.

Dotty scoffs. “You know me, I’m a fucking angel.” Ash snorts and Dotty grins at her and it feel like comradery. Dotty rolls her shoulders back as if to shift the feeling away. “Right, back to business. Looked into this Mitchell guy that Branning sent us towards, had to because we got nothing else,” Dotty rolls her eyes here, annoyed like she usually is whenever a victim gives them little to nothing. (“The whole point of your whole shebang was to spare me trouble, not give me more,” she lamented once as Ash chuckled where she lay on her living room floor, Dotty perched on Ash’s couch, looking pleased with herself for making her laugh, both of them drunk after solving a case.) “And found an entire family who live not far from here, just moved in at the edge of town, so I’m trying to figure out which member of the family we should talk to – wha- why do you look like that?”

Ash can only imagine how pallid she looks as her mind races, spinning around the thought process of, if the Mitchells have just moved in, then maybe her family has as well, maybe they’re just around the corner, maybe they’re going to walk in any second and her mother will smirk at as if to say, _you never really left, I didn’t_ let _you_. It’s pounding a headache into her temple and already she wants the case gone, to have never touched Jack Branning and read the note he had scribbled for her, she wants it to not have existed.

She fidgets with Dotty’s napkin in order to escape her gaze, but it doesn’t change the way she sees Dotty’s face frown in contemplation. She’s too sharp and she reaches the conclusion far too quickly for Ash to be able to come up with a reasonable lie. “Holy shit, you know the Mitchells, don’t you?”

Ash wants to lie, and feels the denial sit in the back of her throat like bile but she can’t do that to Dotty, Dotty who’s an asshole and always has something cutting to say in the back of her tongue and is always looking for an escape route, but also Dotty who smiles clumsily like she’s never done it without trying to ply drinks out of the person she’s smiling at, and drinks with Ash when they solve a case and sometimes catches her eye and makes Ash feel like they’re in on an inside joke together, just something for the two of them. “Yes,” Ash sighs and pushes back some hair that has fallen out of her ponytail. “They did business with my family from time to time.”

“Business,” Dotty echoes, eyebrows disappearing into her hairline as she realises that Ash has used a kid-friendly word to describe entire families dedicated to committing crimes. “Christ, Ash, are you in the _mafia?_ ”

Ash shushes her and tilts her head to see if anyone heard Dotty’s exclamation. “Shut up, _no_ , of course not, I left my family and even then it was just – money laundering and other illegal shit. Barely anyone died.”

Dotty’s eyes almost bug out of her head. “ _Barely_ ,” she mimics. She looks like she wants to laugh from how insane the whole situation is, and Ash feels the same, it is barely 2pm and she’s had to spill so much to her closest friends and it’s so exhausting, she wants to never tell anyone anything ever again. “God, spoken like a real killer.”

Ash glares at her and Dotty grins at her manically. “This is going to be a thing isn’t it? You’re going to make it a thing.”

Dotty cackles. “Absolutely! I mean, you’re a part of a crime family, that’s _hilarious!_ ”

Ash sighs, exhausted but can’t help laughing breathlessly as Dotty swings an arm around her shoulders and tugs her into her side, all while asking if Ash could please get her family on that one officer who keeps giving her tickets around the corner because he’s doing her tits in, all while ignoring Ash pointing out that she should just stop parking on double yellow lines.

Ash smiles and thinks that she’s going to like having this joke with Dotty, no matter how annoying it is, because it will be something that is just theirs.

//

This is how it is: Bobby had showed up three and a half years ago for a job interview back when The Pie Hole was filled with half opened boxes and pie lids strewn about as Keegan and Ash attempted to wing owning an entire business.

Bobby had sat across from her in a rickety chair looking pale in a loose shirt and tie and Ash had thought how ridiculous the whole set up was considering Bobby was barely eighteen years old and she had only turned nineteen like five months ago and she was meant to be some wise source of authority. Bobby was definitely treating her like one with the way his thin shoulders were so tense she thought he was going to snap in half.

(He was Ian Beale’s son, something Keegan had noticed right away. “We can’t hire him. He’s probably here to spy for him, tell him we’re not positioning our pies at an exact forty-five degree angle and he’s gonna take our loan away as soon as he hears.”

Ash had looked at him exasperated from where they sat across from each other at opposite sides of the coffee table, piles of paperwork between them. “Your hatred for Beale has gone too far, he’s not a supervillain.” She ignored how he muttered _close enough_. “Besides, what if he’s doing the opposite, what is he’s being, like, rebellious?”

Keegan had given her an incredulous look and rolled his eyes. “If Ian Beale’s progeny, is not a twat in any way then I’ll –“ he struggled for a moment for something insane to do, “I don’t know, something drastic, anyway.”

Ash sighed.)

Bobby didn’t look like Ian. Ash supposed is she squinted, she could see that their eyes were the same shade but all she could see was how Ian entered every space like it belonged to him or would very soon anyway and spoke to people like they were simply there to help him reach his goals, like people were resources to spend in order to gain. Bobby didn’t look like that at all, he looked like he would rather take up no space at all, and spoke quietly in a hushed voice, eyes flickering around the room. Ash had been hit with the comparison of a bird cradling a broken wing, curled in on itself.

“You’re hired,” Ash had blurted at the end of the interview and watched as Bobby stared at and finally made direct eye contact, his hands trembling before he smiled for the first time and Ash decided that she wanted to see it more.

(“See when we get a letter declining our next loan payments, I am going to personally blame you,” Keegan told Ash when Bobby stumbled out after stuttering through several words of gratitude, and barely flinched when Ash punched him in the arm.)

(The loan payments never stopped, and Bobby smiled every day that he worked which Ash took as a personal victory.)

//

There’s a couple of hours until The Pie Hole shuts, and Ash finds herself wondering if she might just be able to get through the day without confronting what happened last night (Keegan had came out of his office and he looked like he was still processing everything but he had also messed up Dotty’s hair with a grin, so Ash had taken that as a sign that he was feeling more like himself again.). Dotty is sitting in front of her, flicking through a newspaper and scoffing every so often at what’s written, one of Dotty’s hobbies, she has realised, is that she simply enjoys making fun of everything and anything and other people finding this funny seems like a bonus more than anything – Ash didn’t comment on how Dotty decided to sit around here for four hours instead of back in her office, alone, and instead spent most of her time trying to convince her to try different types of pie.

Ash had finally gotten Dotty to try a bite of raspberry when the door chimes as a new customer comes in and Ash feels herself freeze. Iqra Ahmed smiles at her and approaches the front counter she’s standing behind. Ash is pretty sure her knees are about to crumble with the amount of tension she feels running through them. Dotty looks her in confusion just as Iqra smiles in greeting and approaches the front counter where they are.

“Hello,” Iqra greets and is too busy rooting a folder out of her bag as she slides into the seat next to Dotty to notice how Ash squeaks but Dotty didn’t and her eyebrows are steadily rising. “I spoke to Mr Beale and it was difficult but I managed to get a compliment out of him about how your profits are steadily rising,” here, she opens the folder and Ash can see a graph but barely processes it, “So, really, we’ve reached a stage of you being able to start paying back your loans and still be able to pay mortgages and wages and the like, which is good, because you can finally be independent of Mr Beale.” She chuckles at this and smiles up at Ash for a response.

Ash doesn’t respond, too busy thinking about Iqra on the road, splayed out like a broken doll and the spot of blood that had gotten onto her pointer finger after touching her. Dotty stares at her before turning to Iqra and sticking her hand out with what Keegan refers to as a shark-like grin. “We haven’t met properly. I’m Dotty Cotton, Private Eye.”

Iqra shakes her hands and answers professionally but distracted. “Iqra Ahmed, I’m Ash’s and Keegan’s financial advisor,” she turns back to Ash and looks worried, a frown furrowing her brows. “Are you alright, Ash?”

Ash continues to stare at her. She’s wearing a white shirt and black trousers and her blazer is folded over the seat next to her and she looks as pretty as she always does but now Ash is deeply traumatised and unable to fully appreciate like she usually does and life is such a _bitch_ sometimes.

Ash jumps when Dotty clamps her hands on her shoulders and starts to steer her into the back. “Sorry, just remembered we had something very important to discuss, be right back with you!” And Dotty shoves her through the door to the back and turns her into Keegan’s office before Iqra can respond with more than a deeper frown and a hand that jolts up as if to catch Ash and wouldn’t that be another nightmare, for her to drop dead again in the middle of her pie shop after a brief glance of skin contact.

“What the fuck is going on?” Dotty asks Keegan, gesturing to Ash who grinds the heels of her hands into her eyes while she sinks into a seat in front of Keegan’s desk. Keegan sounds like he’s about to answer but Dotty interrupts him. “Ok, you look more confused than I do. Context: your financial advisor came in and she looks like she’s about to have a panic attack.”

“Oh shit,” Keegan says and Ash huffs a laugh from behind her hands, surprised she still has the ability to laugh when she’s too busy trying to figure out how she’s going to wear gloves for the rest of time whenever she has to interact with Iqra because she completely forgot about the fact that she can’t ever touch her again without her literally dying. _Again_. “Um, our financial advisor may have died last night and Ash touched her and ran away and here we are.”

Dotty’s incredulous silence feels pretty damning. “Jesus Christ, Ash,” is all she says and Ash moans sadly in response. “Right, ok, well it seems like she doesn’t even know she’s dead, she’s acting not deeply traumatised and totally normal. Well, is her normal carrying about boring graphs and wearing pant suits?” Keegan must nod because Dotty continues. “Ok, great, so you don’t need to have a big, confusing talk on being dead and not dead and your powers and blah blah blah, you’ve just gotta be normal too, right?”

Ash pries her hands away and turns to give her a look. Dotty sighs. “I can’t just pretend nothing happened, I keep remembering how she died and it’s –“ she cuts herself off and scrubs a hand down her face.

She glances at Keegan who is looking at her sadly and for a second it feels like Dotty tries to place a comforting hand on her shoulder before it disappears, and she hears her clears her throat. “Do you want me to get rid of her?” Ash whips around in shock and Dotty rolls her eyes. “Not like that, you’re the one in the mafia not me –” (“You told her your family is the mafia?” Keegan says, distantly and is ignored.) “I mean, just like get her to leave today. And for the foreseeable future,” she adds, seeming to take in how pale Ash is and looks thoughtful, probably trying to come with ways to get someone to never return to an establishment that they work with.

Ash sighs deeply and look between Keegan and Dotty, Dotty moving to lean against Keegan’s desk while Keegan has moved to kneel in front of Ash and wrap his fingers around her wrist, squeezing so she can focus on the contact instead of her spiralling thoughts. She loves them incredibly much, she realises. She knew already, but it seems to hit her like an avalanche of pure emotion, like a sucker-punch filled with warm, fuzzy feelings.

“I can do it,” she decides. “I can be normal.”

Dotty snorts but grins at her and it looks less like a shark now but more a slightly evil dolphin, and Keegan squeezes his fingers before he pulls her to her feet.

She can do this, she thinks. She looks at them both for a second and sees Dotty standing, fully ready to force someone to leave for her and Keegan looking ready to tousle her hair and hug her at the time and thinks that they are the most important people in the world.

She opens the door to Keegan’s office and steps out and turns the corner before stopping in front of the front counter where Iqra is looking at her with a worried frown on her face and Ash almost buckles but steels herself and decides that she can do it, so she does.

“Sorry, I realised that some of my strawberries were about to go out of date. Do you want a slice of apple pie, and you can explain this graph to me again? Also, what’s this about Ian complimenting us?”

Iqra smiles at her, eyes bright and Ash thinks she looks really pretty today as she starts talking.

//

This is how it is: Iqra gestures to the graph and seems to make a joke that makes Ash laugh but keeps a physical distance between them that Iqra doesn’t comment on.

(Unbeknownst to them all, a man watches this all unfold from outside, his expression unreadable as he nods to himself and turns and walks down the street.

He brings his phone out and schedules a family meeting for tomorrow before pocketing it and continuing on his way.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> took me way too long to write this chapter i can only apologise but um yes my tumblr is dennisrickmans so come talk to me !! anyway hope u enjoy and leave a comment with ur thoughts !!
> 
> \- nic

**Author's Note:**

> um. yeah lol agvasjhdhs um dedicated to ellie bc she helped me out with some parts and is also just a Gem tbh, love u gal hope ur well.  
> my tumblr is @dennisrickmans if u wanna come yell at me or like. just have a good old chat i like making new friends tbh  
> hope u enjoy!!  
> \- nic


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